Here is the
great 12th-century mystical poem in an inexpensive unabridged
translation.
The
Reader's Catalog
A stunning English
rendering of a classic mystical allegory
Publisher
The Conference of
the Birds - a philosophical religious poem in prose - is by the
twelfth-century Persian poet and mystic of the School of Islamic
mysticism known as Sufism." "The story starts with the Hoopoe
addressing a gathering of birds urging them to set out on a quest for
the lord of creation, the Simurgh. The subsequent journey in which the
birds have to pass through the valleys of Search, Love, Detachment,
Unity, Wonder and Self-annihilation, is an allegory of the soul's search
for unity with the divine.
Attar, along
with Chaucer and Dante, is a great genius of community and how that
involves the path toward enlightenment. We are these bird-beings
searching for the source of what we are together. —Coleman
Barks
The
Conference of the Birds